


Secrets kept in a Coral Sun Hat

by naein



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, additional tags will be updated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28275429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naein/pseuds/naein
Summary: An extra seam. An attempt to let go. Taeyong lost a pink sun hat to the Yellow Sea. At the age of twenty five he meets Jaehyun on a Wednesday. It’s an oddity, it’s unpredictable—but so are the raging waves. Brave. Careless. Easiest to keep apart from within.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Taeyong
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caledra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caledra/gifts).



> This is a small gift and a birthday present to Caledra. This is only the start, even if it’s a short story. Control is comforting, and comfort is never a bad thing. There's no need to apologise for what matters to you. The unknown is frightening, but sometimes a sudden collision, a new introduction can plant a seed you never knew could grow into a blooming flower one day. Be kinder to yourself, be prouder of yourself, be unforgivingly you.
> 
> This is an AU, characters are based off NCT's idols but are by no means associated with the artists or the company itself. I take no claims over the very real people referred in this story and whose names could easily be changed. Everything is fictional. No copyright infringement is intended for anything other than the story itself.

Others had always found ways to tell him that he couldn’t possibly remember anything that had happened to him when he was a child. Any memories he was clinging to that painted a picture of a small boy under the age of five, had to be fabricated in hindsight. It wasn’t real.

Taeyong disagreed. Once, he used to tell them so. He had been brave as a child. One of those running with bare feet, unafraid of the thorns hiding on the ground—and not only on dew stained grass, but on grainy sand. 

Taeyong still remembered the first time he had faced the heavy wind, biting onto his small clothes (it had taken hold of that vividly pink sun hat Taeyong had loved so much, and lost that very day. He had bawled his eyes out as his mother had carried him on her shoulder when the hours were turning darker by each minute—Taeyong wouldn’t leave until they found it again. He was carried away. Too small for a refusal to have any greater influence or impact), and roaring waves that threw themselves onto the shore as if they had no sense of pain—as if they had no fears at all.

Taeyong was born in the middle of the buzz of traffic; the flickering lights dancing in reds and greens; the fast movements of hectic bodies already too late to their next appointments, but unwilling to acknowledge reality. Taeyong had been four when he had first seen the Yellow Sea and it’s intrepidity up close. It had been one of those things Taeyong had always talked about before visiting the real deal. He never missed out on the opportunity to get to talk about the Sea. He would talk about it often and plenty, to anyone who wanted to listen. The truth of the Sea—when he finally came face-to-face with the embodied rage that it was—was not what the four year old had been expecting. The calm and the serenity in his picture books were nowhere to be seen. Instead there was this surreal rumble, like a nervous tummy that never settled. 

Today, Taeyong was twenty five, and he still didn’t keep the open waters close to his heart—yet, Taeyong had always held a certain amount of respect towards it. It was difficult to know if the Yellow Sea was defined by its bravery, or carelessness.

That was how Taeyong used to be as well. Brave. Careless. It was a thin line between the two. From the outside, you could barely see the difference. It was within where you found it held close to no similarities. They were unmistakably individual, unique—but the image they took when presented to others made them into fake twins. It was something that had became much more evident to him at a later stage. If Taeyong could wind back time, he would. He would go back to all his mistakes, and he would undo them—but most of all, he wanted to get back to the moment he experienced the Yellow Sea for the first time again, and see if he would find himself coming to the same conclusion today.

***

It was a day not unlike the others. There was no wind. It was summer. The air—too hot, and too stagnant. The reluctance to move made it seem as if time itself had stopped. Time disagreed, and continued. That was how Taeyong first met Jaehyun. Jaehyun was no one in particular—and would have remained so, had it not been for the sun hat in his hand and the collision they met through.

The view was like a vision in a dream: a young man, running around Seoul’s dull streets; the entire world was grey; the skyscrapers reaching for nothing, towering up like a supercilious crowd surrounding them; the people, passing by, in their strict, predictable suits.

Taeyong wasn’t so very unlike the rest of them. He had put on the clothes he had prepared for Wednesdays. It was a Wednesday, and it had seemed just like any other Wednesdays that had come and gone before this one. Though, Taeyong should have known something would be different this time. It always was. People just never looked close enough. Perhaps they didn’t have time to seek out the details, see what truly defined this day and differentiated it from any other.

It was the sun hat that made the difference. It wouldn’t have been a peculiar sight, considering the season. The temperature made sweat bead at Taeyong’s temples, and he had swallowed, wishing for the sweat to simply go away, not wanting to contaminate the back of his hand by wiping at it. Another sign of time passing (sweat beading and crawling down the sides of his face) even though everything appeared unmoving.

It was the colour of the sun hat that struck Taeyong right into his ribcage (coral, but a hue that knocked at the door to vermillion and plum—but it was too light, too bright for the deep seriousness of such colours). It felt like a punch. Instead of being a bizarre addition to a world well known to him, it seemed as if everything else was bleak in contrast to that very sun hat. The hat became the centre of the world. A key to another time and space. An alternative version. A whisper of a promise spoken at night—one of those that were difficult to remember the exact specifics of, but which stayed upon waking up, and that never truly left. A taste still on the tongue, familiar but the name long forgotten.

The hat was not worn on any head, but carried like a frail animal in the hands of a handsome gentleman. The young man kept looking around, his head snapping from one side to the other; a shopping window, to a car speeding by, tracking the soles of a businessman walking in front of him, even attempting to study the noise of the city—the one that held no visual traces to find. His own attire wasn’t much unlike everyone else’s. In fact no other article of his fit had even remotely hinted towards the style of the hat in his hand. He looked perfectly normal. One of those people Taeyong wouldn’t have looked at a second time (already having figured he was someone who earned a nice sum to bring directly to his pocket, and who had no time for the likes of Taeyong—and definitely not a coral sun hat). It was the look on his face, or perhaps the way his very being stood out in contrast to the hat. The young man looked lost—or he was looking for someone who was.

Of course, a part of Taeyong knew it wasn’t the hat he had owned as a child. It was obvious already, the rim had an additional seam that Taeyong’s never had.

Maybe it was the hat that made Taeyong want to help, reach out and interfere with someone else’s pattern—or it was the very fact that the person who held onto it (carefully, fingers only curled half-way—as if not wanting to crease a newly printed paper) ran straight into Taeyong on his transit from one sidewalk to another.

“I’m sorry, I’m so terribly sorry!”

“It’s quite alright,” Taeyong smiled, not wanting to cause any problem.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see you when… I didn’t mean to-”

The conversation had come to an abrupt end as a car had honked and the two of them had scrambled to run across to the closest island that could provide them safety. It was mere coincidence that they had both opted for the small raised miniature platform in the middle of the trafficked street. It was no typical space to rest and acquaint with a stranger—in-between bustling people and accelerated vehicles ready to move on. Once more, Taeyong was reminded of an entity that in only a very few ways resembled that blue peace he had come to associate with calm and beauty as a kid.

Here they were, two young men clinging onto an architectural oddity on the ground as if they would be eaten by sharks if they stepped out of line.

The other man’s hair was suddenly whipping in the air, fringe whisking about foreboding a storm. Had it not been a windless day this Wednesday? He parted his lips, but Taeyong heard nothing.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You okay?” the other had asked then, voice a little louder—or perhaps the breeze had whiffed in Taeyong’s direction this time, caused by another car flying by.

“It’s my sun hat.”

“What?”

“The hat. It's mine.”

Taeyong didn’t know why he had said that. He couldn’t bring back the past to the present. It wouldn’t change anything, and yet here he had still been: claiming the impossible.

***

Later, Taeyong got his theory confirmed. The sun hat wasn’t the young man’s, and he had been looking for its owner. Taeyong had spent the remaining day looking as well, but to no avail. There was no true owner to be found.

The young lad had laughed.

“Why did you say the hat was yours then?” he had asked later, it wasn’t dark but it was still a Wednesday.

“I don’t know,” Taeyong had said, open and honest, feeling his cheeks flush a little at his own unpredictable silliness and outright lie.

When did he last invite unpredictability into his life?

Taeyong’s entire world was rimmed by rules. His life was the extra seam around the new sun hat. Some might have thought it boring, some might have thought it clever. To Taeyong it was neither. The decision to keep constant order hadn’t been a conscious one. Like a seam being sewn, the rules had aligned themselves one by one in a precise line. Taeyong hadn’t been aware of it at first—and once it was settled, the thread was already carding through his life in a thorough, tightened grip—and then it was too late. Once the stitches were made, the break of the original fabric couldn’t be undone. The irregular holes would be a reminder of what had previously been there. An echoing space of nothing.

The fear Taeyong had felt back when he had first seen the waves crash against the hard sand had made him afraid. _“You can’t mean you share sympathies with a Sea?”_ some had asked, whilst others stated: _“There’s no use for you to feel what a Sea can’t.”_ and none were wrong. That didn’t mean that the fear within Taeyong stopped, and eased its embrace around him. Instead, it only increased, to become a small puddle not bigger than a child foot—but it grew with time. Now, there was an entire Sea inside him. Thunder and storm wreaking havoc daily.

The young man had bent over in half. Taeyong had joined him, sharing a laugh with a stranger. It had led to: “I’m Jung Jaehyun,” and then to: “Lee Taeyong.”


	2. Searching

Summer ended. It never ended with a  _ goodbye _ , not like the lingering  _ goodbyes _ of winter. The snow plastering itself to every surface, never wanting to let go.

At the start, Taeyong didn’t see Jung Jaehyun very often. Jaehyun was young. He was younger than Taeyong in fact—though Jaehyun’s soul was older than Taeyong’s. He didn’t seem that young. It was Jaehyun who—although not without an apology—kept turning down any offer to search for the sun hat’s real owner, a request sent every Wednesday since.

Taeyong didn’t blame him. Searching was a divergence from his normal pattern anyhow. A pattern Taeyong had come to care for and nurture even though he had never chosen it. Now it simply was, and there was no return. Instead it was Jaehyun’s eyes that were old. It was his gaze, it held an unspoken wisdom. A truth not shared in words. Taeyong wanted to ask, but he didn’t know the question to which the brown of Jaehyun’s eyes (sometimes as dark and enigmatic as a night sky—sometimes like the deep centre of a mahogany tree) answered.

The first time Jaehyun answered Taeyong was on a Monday. It was the first clue Taeyong got to who Jaehyun was.  _ Why a Monday, why not a Friday—or Saturday? The time most busy people finally find time for other things? _ Taeyong wanted to ask, but never dared to. Jaehyun had his own way of existing. It took some time, but after a few regular get-togethers Taeyong started to notice. It wasn’t in the big gestures, but in the finer details. Jaehyun was the invisible words between every sentence in a book; he was sunlight on rainy days; a forgotten cup of coffee on a table right in front of him (only because he was so focused on the task at hand, eyes tracking Taeyong and making him elaborate on his concepts).

It had been Taeyong’s idea.

“Let’s make a poster,” he said, expecting Jaehyun to cast the idea aside—but he hadn’t.

Instead here they found themselves, sitting inside the small coffee shop just around the corner of the street they had first met, designing a poster for the coral sun hat.

_ MISSING _ , Taeyong spelled out, but it didn’t sit right with him. The hat wasn’t missing, it was found—but not by the right owner.

There must have been something giving Taeyong away: maybe it was the absentminded nibbling on his index finger’s nail (a bad habit, one he had tried to get rid of—when had it started?), or perhaps a crease in-between his eyebrows.  _ Something _ made Jaehyun reach over, hand nearly, but not actually, brushing Taeyong’s as he leaned over the table to reach for the computer, and tapped the  _ delete _ button, one, two, three… seven times.  _ SEARCHING _ , Jaehyun wrote instead. It fit so much better. That was what it was, Taeyong thought: nothing was missing, nothing was lost—but searching for answers, searching for its belonging. That was the core of it.

***

It became a habit. Not a bad one—but a new one. Jaehyun was difficult to get to. He didn’t answer his texts—and not, as Taeyong had first assumed, because he didn’t want to talk. Jaehyun was usually free in the afternoons, but that didn’t mean he would be  _ able _ to meet. He didn’t always show up, even when they had decided on a time and place. The first time it happened Taeyong had cried. He hadn’t meant to. The tears simply slipped past his eyelids and dropped down his cheeks with or without his permission. It happened. Taeyong had thought Jaehyun was saying  _ goodbye _ —but Jaehyun hadn’t meant to. It wasn’t that he was forgetful per se, but that he was easily swept with the wind. Jaehyun was summer. Unexpected. Warm on most days. Rainy on some, but still moving on, wind blowing and light still showing a way—wherever it led to, it was directed ahead, forwards. Jaehyun never meant to say  _ goodbye _ , but time slipped through his fingers, not unlike Taeyong’s tears—and Taeyong learnt that some things happened, whether one wanted to or not.

Jaehyun was always sorry when he would realise that the moment had passed. Nevertheless, he always wanted to make sure they could meet again next time.

Taeyong added a few stitches to his pattern. It meant that Taeyong showed up every second Wednesday outside the university entrance Jaehyun attended (Taeyong once asked what Jaehyun studied, but soon Taeyong had found himself telling Jaehyun about his own course (dancing). Jaehyun had looked at him with those knowing eyes again. It happened. Things didn’t always go as planned. There could be other times). Taeyong didn’t want to impose, but every time their eyes met from across the street a smile would light up Jaehyun’s face. Taeyong trusted that Jaehyun would tell him if he was bothered by his presence. When Jaehyun disagreed about something, he wouldn't be outright about it. He often feigned indifference to not upset others—but his ears gave him away. They spoke in clear colours when his lips couldn’t. If a person could be an entire season, Jaehyun was. A constant, with subtle changes. Taeyong returned to the street outside his university following his own pattern, and even though Jaehyun didn’t follow a pattern like Taeyong; Jaehyun was always happy to be swept up by the wind. Taeyong only had to make sure he got whisked away with him.

***

They had created a separate email address for the  _ Searching _ poster. It was with a blinding white nothingness that their new inbox stared back at them. No new mail.

It was impossible for the two to fill the blank space. They had to wait—but it was within their capacity to fill the time spent in waiting; between grinding coffee beans, people talking in hushed voices on a table to their side, and the beeping noise of traffic around the corner through the window.

“Let’s take a walk,” Jaehyun said eventually, another man in a suit walking by their usual spot at the café.

“Where to?”

“Where do you want to go?”

Where could they go? After summer came autumn, and this one came with a current reminding them of how gentle any summer breeze was in comparison. If Seoul was grey on a summer’s day—autumn made the city fade like the memory in a photograph (not one of those exposed to the sun, so bright to look at any details had been burnt away—but the ones neatly placed in a family photo book, so old any names of the people present had been lost or forgotten. Black and stark against the white paper, but impersonal, as if belonging to someone else).

“I don’t know,” Taeyong said truthfully, “Do you have any place in mind?”

Jaehyun shook his head, but he was smiling: “No exact location.”

They left the table by the window, the one leaning so close to the street it was possible to get a sense of what it would be like to live a life as a statue. Unable to communicate with anyone. An observer. Pilfered by everything that life was. A loophole in time and space.

They left for the unknown. What had become of Taeyong? Had he not been a man of calculated order? Appreciating the known? The tried and true? Taeyong knew what he liked: cooking. To follow the perfectly measured recipes. He liked the unmistakable sweet tang of raspberries on sugared cakes; poking out all seeds from a watermelon in spring; and blasting classic music through his headset, for a moment lost to the precision and structure that it was performed with. It was the reliable that Taeyong leaned back on—but then that wouldn’t explain why he loved watching films of adventure, that made his heart beat and  _ beat _ and beat; nor could he then find a reason for having wanted to be a firefighter as a child. A field in which he would have to be ready to put his life on the line over and over again, the unknown waiting around every corner, and tasks not only edged by acts of heroism, but also the heavy weight of much more unfortunate outcomes.

It could have been a wish said only to the quiet of the night, that made Taeyong follow Jaehyun on this particular Wednesday, leaving the scent of coffee behind. 

Heart in a knot Taeyong was soon standing outside, facing someone he didn’t count as a friend: the rain. Taeyong had never been able to appreciate the rain. It was irregular. It tapped on his shoulders; teasing and annoying him. It drenched his clothes. Making every step more burdensome than the other.

“Here,” Jaehyun said, and before Taeyong could turn to see what was happening, an umbrella was unfolding like a flower and put above their heads, “You would think a flower would need water to grow—I assume you find your nutrients elsewhere.”

_ You’re the summer—with you, there  _ is _ sun _ , Taeyong realised.

The first time they left the coffee shop Jaehyun took them to a hall. Inside was the sound of  _ thud, thud, thud, thud, thud _ not unlike Taeyong’s heart when he looked at the scene in front of them: basketball. Sports hadn’t been Taeyong’s strong forte in school. Dancing was something that had come to him much later, and something he had only started appreciating when he figured out its pattern. Taeyong had always been small. Never compared to the tall kids who excelled in sports. He had always been the weaker.

“I trust you,” Taeyong had said as he found himself with a ball in between the palms of his hands.

“It’s not me you have to trust,” Jaehyun only smiled, never mocking, only warm.

“Then who?”

“Yourself.”

***

A part of Taeyong ached at the unpredictability of their meetings. He didn’t choose order. He didn’t create his own pattern. It had been laid out for him. He could only stitch in the lines drawn up for him. But, another part of Taeyong was intrigued. Jaehyun lured something out of Taeyong. A part he had hidden far, far back, inside himself. It was a fascination. Almost an interest in seeing how far he could take himself.

“You don’t have to,” Jaehyun often said, and Taeyong knew the other meant it when he said those words—others could use it as a weapon, but never Jaehyun. 

He was summer. He was an uplifting breeze. Jaehyun didn’t ask for the impossible, he never asked for Taeyong to do more than he was capable of. Instead Jaehyun hit the very core of a thundering secret still crashing inside Taeyong.

_ Does it make me any braver? Does it make me careless? _

Winter was knocking on the door and Taeyong asked the two questions aloud.

“You don’t know?” Jaehyun asked, voice curling as if he was genuinely surprised.

Taeyong smiled a little, but not happily. He was already bitten by cold.

“No,” Taeyong admitted, “The answer is lost, right? I won’t ever know.”

Jaehyun returned the expression in double and Taeyong didn’t understand why Jaehyun’s smile was warm, again, unlike their guest waiting to be let in when autumn was taking leave. 

Eyes like newly brewed coffee (not forgotten, never cold—but rich and vibrant) looked deeply into Taeyong’s. What did he see? Jaehyun parted his lips, letting out a breath of hot air. His existence was ignorant of the changing weather. A small steam of visible droplets danced around his lips, like a tiny drizzle; gentle, unlike rain from the skies. Jaehyun gave a little shake of his head. He said: “Not lost. Keep searching.”


	3. Found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because yesterday was a good day for C, and I hope, the beginning of many, many more good days to come.  
> Sorry this story is a little sad, but hopefully it’ll bring warmth eventually.  
> Happy New Year, friend.

When Taeyong had come back to his classmates, he was no longer the same boy who had left for the trip to the sea.  _ “You’ve been burned,” _ Taeyong was told.  _ “No!” _ he had stubbornly retorted, because the sea didn’t burn. The encounter left no mark. 

It was not about an imprint, but what the waves had deprived him of. Taeyong had sat in deep thought when his class scattered for lunch. His mind had been spinning, filled with movements dauntless and unabashed, unafraid of anything. 

_ “You need to stop,” _ Taeyong had heard someone say.  _ “Lee Taeyong, do you hear me?” _

Taeyong had been four years old when he started biting on his nails, sometimes, even now, he only stopped once he felt his teeth digging into flesh. It wasn’t decent, it wasn’t clean, it wasn’t right. He knew this. If he could stop, he would have long ago. 

_ “It’s disgusting,” _ people said,  _ “It makes you seem afraid.” _ (and he was, but Taeyong wasn’t only afraid; he was terrified).

Taeyong had thought himself brave—in comparison to the Yellow Sea: he was nothing. An entity of such powers quickly gained the four year-old’s respect.

The Yellow Sea had come with thrumming strength, and crashed itself into Taeyong’s life. A reality that washed away any previous idealised fantasies; dreams catching in the wind, and what was lost, would be lost forever. 

Carried away on a shoulder, more and more distance had been put between them—between him and his dreams, or him and reality; Taeyong still didn’t know. Tears had blurred his vision when they left. Deprived of his sight, what remained of the furious water was only the sound. Drums that never stopped hammering on, and on, and on. A rhythm Taeyong had later tried to seek out himself, but never managed to find.

Here, at a final performance of what could very well be Taeyong’s last Winter Showcase at this university, he once again attempted, and failed to translate the rhythm of the sea to one his body could follow.

“I should have expected as much, but I was completely blown away by your performance. You choreographed it too? You dance with such vigour, such—hey, what’s wrong?”

Jaehyun was always so caring, always so generous—but Taeyong had fooled him too, and that’s why the world was turning obscure and cloudy, tears rolling down his cheeks (unasked for).

“Don’t you see?” Taeyong’s words came out a little out of order, upsetting the rhythm, “That’s where you’re wrong… I have no strength.”

Taeyong’s capacity for dancing was far from the unceasing energy of  _ any _ sea. Taeyong had tried many genres, he had sought out as much knowledge as possible. He thought that if he knew all techniques available to him—he would be able to recreate the impact the Yellow Sea had had on him. He must have been mental to have thought it possible.

Taeyong stopped biting on his nail, letting his hand fall to his side like a useless tool instead.

“Have you lost your mind? No strength?” Jaehyun’s eyes looked intense, but not agitated.

“Don’t tell me I’m underestimating myself,” Taeyong said.

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know,” maybe he was a little tired, “Everyone else says that,” Taeyong shrugged.

“Then I won’t,” Jaehyun said, as if nothing had ever been easier, “It’s not that you don’t try, I see how much you work—rather, I think it’s that you’ve already set the bar so high that you know you’ll never be able to reach it. A part of you won’t allow yourself to jump, and successfully fall down the other side.”

***

The cold didn’t keep them inside the way Taeyong had expected it would.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?” Taeyong asked.

“Limiting yourself.”

There was an honesty to Jaehyun’s words, one that Taeyong had rarely come across before. Words were used to flatten, to make unimportant or to sooth—or they would come out haunting, and mocking. Jaehyun’s words were none. Jaehyun’s words were open, and too kind to be real. 

Taeyong had once been honest, too. He wanted to be, again—but with honesty came facing the truth, and the truth was rarely pretty. Jaehyun tried to grow flowers with the wrong soil. Taeyong had been hiding a sea within himself. It wouldn’t matter how much Jaehyun tried, how hard he worked to make Taeyong bloom. Taeyong’s sea would always drown any seed before any life could even begin.

Despite the fact, Jaehyun never gave up. When Taeyong withdrew during winter break, the doorbell rang. Even if it was a Wednesday, Taeyong was surprised to see Jaehyun on his doorstep. It wasn’t  _ their _ Wednesday, after all. Perhaps it  _ could _ be.

It was Jaehyun who curled his fingers around Taeyong’s wrist, and pulled him outside. Whatever structure Jaehyun went by, it made sense only to him.

Taeyong had stopped asking where they were heading a long time ago. He knew Jaehyun usually walked wherever his feet took him—and if he had an agenda, it was often planned out as a surprise (more often than not something interfered with his plan, and they ended up elsewhere instead).

_ “What do you like the most?” _ Jaehyun had asked a week prior. 

_ “Like?” _ Taeyong had answered, head tilting to the side. 

_ “Just say what pops into your head!” _

Taeyong had thought of several things, but picking one thing to mention was harder than it should have been.

_ “Anything that takes your breath away, makes you feel alive?” _

_ Yes, _ Taeyong had thought,  _ Yes, there is. _

_ “Taeyong?”  _ Jaehyun had said his name many times before, but each time he said it, it sounded different on his tongue—it was how Taeyong recognised Jaehyun: small variations, never stuck in the same routine,  _ “You okay?” _

_ “Sure,” _ Taeyong had replied, but his voice had sounded clipped, strained, unnatural—caught by roars and thunder.

_ “Do you mind… telling me?” _

***

“We’re here.”

Taeyong stirred, eyes blinking heavily as he tried to adjust to the light filtering in. He felt disoriented. He usually never did.

“Sorry, but we have to leave before they continue on.”

It was only then that Taeyong was able to comprehend the situation he was in: head still entirely supported by someone’s shoulder; that very shoulder belonging to no other than Jung Jaehyun; Jaehyun absently patting Taeyong’s knee in what seemed to be an attempt to get him conscious—and more acutely:  _ up _ to leave.

Taeyong bolted upright, head swimming a little as he tried to find his balance again.

“Sorry about that,” Taeyong said.

“Don’t be. You looked peaceful.”

The worst thing was, that he had been. Taeyong hadn’t slept so soundly in months. It must have been the pressure of work and practice finally surfacing, showing its face.

It was an early day in January and the temperature was preserving the layer of frozen water still gathered on the window sills of the train. It had only taken about one hour to reach Incheon, and even so Taeyong had been taken in by a deep slumber.

“Incheon?” Taeyong had asked, curious, in spite of himself, as he read the sign of the station.

Jaehyun smiled.

“Yes. We’ve come to visit someone.”

_ Who? _ was the question that waited at the tip of Taeyong’s tongue as they hurried out of the train before it took off for its next destination.

The winter wasn’t quiet, not the way the books described it. Art was not made to imitate reality. Was what described instead was always a romanticisation. Taeyong, if anyone, knew this. People hurried past them, and many ran into the two of them as they looked for the  _ Exit _ sign—or any signs of an exit. Why was it so difficult to find their way through? Was it because of the different directions all these people were heading in, or because they themselves didn’t know where to go?

“It doesn’t matter,” Jaehyun had said, all too calmly.

“But, we’ll be late?”

“We got time. Our friend doesn’t have any plans,” Jaehyun looked certain of his words, You needn’t worry. We’ll find our way soon enough.”

_ You’re wrong, _ Taeyong thought, concerned—but, Jaehyun didn’t lie. They did find a way out, even if Taeyong’s heart had begged to differ.

Taeyong had met Jaehyun, and the first words that had escaped him were not so different from those he had often used as a child. They might have been bold, but Taeyong had known them to be false, and careless. It was carelessness that had him claiming the impossible:  _ “The hat. It’s mine,” _ he had said. A straight up lie, with no decent explanation.

Taeyong breathed in the scent of gas and snow. Incheon wasn’t unlike Seoul. There was snow falling from the sky, their pace much slower than the city moving around them. Everyone was always in a hurry. 

Taeyong looked at Jaehyun in wonder, and found himself with another realisation. Taeyong could have been wrong: maybe it wasn’t that Jaehyun never asked for the impossible; because sometimes, it wasn’t the circumstances, but the fixed preconstructed ideas inside that prevented him from reaching what he wished for. How long the waiting would be, or how many attempts that would have to be made to achieve what he longed for—those were the factors out of his control, the things almost impossible to determine.

“You see?”

“We made it,” Taeyong breathed in relief, the sentence a whisper passing over his lips.

It should have been impossible for Jaehyun to hear—but he did.

“Yes, we did.” 

“How did you know?”

“That we would find a way?” Jaehyun’s chuckle was warm, dark, familiar, “You,” he said with emphasis, index finger poking Taeyong’s side, “Always find one.”

“I... do?” Taeyong couldn’t hide his surprise.

Jaehyun gave a nod in reply.

“I don’t understand. How do you always… see everything so clearly,” Taeyong asked after a moment.

It was the twentieth person who almost stumbled into them—this one apologised, although hecticly, before running off again. Since having come out of the station, they had been stuck near the  _ Exit _ (or more likely,  _ one _ of the many exits). Taeyong thought that maybe they should start walking, he didn’t want to stand in the way.

“I don’t,” Jaehyun looked amused, “But…” he continued, eyes serious again, “I see you.”

Taeyong turned around. The exit doors were made of glass, his and Jaehyun’s reflections were standing inside them. Only a little off from the centre. Taeyong could see Jaehyun’s eyes following Taeyong’s gaze, their eyes meeting in the glass.

“A mirror can only reflect an imitation of reality,” Jaehyun said.

_ Then where can I see the truth? _ Taeyong didn’t have time to ask. Jaehyun put his hand on top of Taeyong’s coat, palm resting for a moment on Taeyong’s chest, at his left side—over his heart.

“You’ll find the truth,” Jaehyun said, “Here,” his hand dropped to his side, “Look no further.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, and thank you for any kudos left on this small fic! Wishing you all the best!


	4. Forgotten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter to make an ending—or potentially, the start of a beginning; whichever you prefer. Celebrating good news for C, and finally having obtained some time to write myself, I bring you this final chapter of the story—but fear not, there will be an epilogue to wrap things up and maybe get a few questions answered! Thank you for your patience, to anyone waiting for this fic. Time is a fickle thing! Unfortunately, you'll have to wait further for the last update of this fic, but it will come!

Memory was a fickle thing. It was intangible. Taeyong had always tried to seek a number, a percentage that would tell him if his own was reliable  _ enough _ or not. People told him he couldn’t trust his own mind, but then—could they trust their own? It wasn’t as if others only criticised Taeyong for believing his childhood memories and never spoke of their own themselves. People weren’t that consistent in their lives. Instead people often went back to their own stories. Taeyong had never understood if he was supposed to read their words as fiction, or if he was meant to think them true. He wanted to trust his own memories—and so he allowed himself to trust others’ too.

Jaehyun was standing beside him. It was winter. It was cold—but if Taeyong had thought it could be enough to freeze the world around him, he had been wrong. In front of them were no soaring roars and relentless blows.

“I know,” Jaehyun said, and there was guilt tainting his voice—Taeyong wished he could reach around for it and wipe it off, “I should have asked before taking you here.”

Taeyong didn’t need the waves to throw his answers away, they had vanished on their own.

“Let me know if you want to go back? There’s a train leaving in about an hour—and another one a little later, we should have time to go back to catch the first one.”

Sometimes, Taeyong could speak for hours on end, his words never running out—and at other times, he was lost to a feeling of greatness no words could live up to. How was he to explain what he felt? How was he to explain what this meant to him—when no words could it explain it even to himself?. Instead, Taeyong reached for Jaehyun’s hand this time. Taeyong took a single step forward. He did it himself. Jaehyun was not leaving, but he let Taeyong take the step himself. It was small. It was something.

With Jaehyun’s hand in his, Taeyong dared to use actions to speak for him.

It was so different to anything Taeyong had thought a reunion would be. Here he was, and the water was quiet. It wasn’t frozen exactly, but it wasn’t lively the way Taeyong so strongly remembered it. Had the waters been waiting for him? Asleep—all these years? It couldn’t be. Taeyong was only one of many walking this Earth. The sea didn’t differentiate between the worthy and the undeserving. No, this wasn’t  _ for _ Taeyong. The sea was more than Taeyong had thought it to be. It could be quiet too. It could be calm. It could observe. Even in its peacefulness, it was not motionless. The sea was ever changing. It wasn’t the sea that had waited. It was Taeyong. The Yellow Sea had moved on.

At first, Taeyong thought he would cry. The way the sea was leaving him—the very entity that had seemed to define his very being for all these years, was not anymore what he had thought it to be. Images weren’t enough. No painting could make it justice. None of the images that had found their place in his mind (the very images that Taeyong had nurtured so well) turned out to be true. The impact of his realisation was strong. Overwhelming in a way that made Taeyong almost stumble on his tiny spot in front of the water. But it was also a fresh wind. It was a breeze. It was moving. Maybe, more than anything: it was empathy. Taeyong felt in tune with the sea in a way that contrasted what had divided them so monumentally before this moment.

A part of him wanted to hold onto what he had known to be true. It was the complex emotions of being so fundamentally wrong. It was a goodbye to nostalgia. It was a change to his pattern he had built from scratch.

There was also relief. Relief of what had squeezed his lungs at night and what trapped him inside his mind—finally, easing that grip around him. Instead only keeping its arms wrapped around him. The touch, almost soothing. As if it was talking to him. Maybe, it wanted to say something. Taeyong wondered what it was. Could he find his words again?

“I should have known,” Taeyong heard himself say more than he  _ felt _ it.

There was no answer, but Taeyong wasn’t worried anymore. Jaehyun’s hand was still firmly in his palm. Reachable. Consistent. There. Jaehyun gave Taeyong the time he needed.

“How did I not realise earlier…”

“What?” Jaehyun finally asked.

A single question. It was filled with warmth.

“That it was all in my mind…”

“Does that make it unimportant?”

Taeyong’s words dried up in the sun of Jaehyun.

“Your ideas; your thoughts; what is  _ yours _ isn’t unimportant. It is important—or else, you wouldn’t have kept them so close to you.”

“But—” Taeyong tried.

“But—what?” Taeyong heard Jaehyun’s voice was closer again.

He had taken that step forward as well. Following Taeyong.

“This isn’t a Goodbye,” Jaehyun’s voice was clear and solid—unlike the waters ahead.

“Then what is it?”

Taeyong turned his head to see Jaehyun smiling. Only a faint one, but it was there. Things come and go. In passing; a meeting; a reencounter. Much like Jaehyun, it wasn’t leaving him behind.

“It is what you want it to be.”

Jaehyun was right about many things. Taeyong felt uncertain in the face of the unknown. Perhaps there were many things that simply were. He could keep the things he wanted. If he was lucky, they would resurface. If they didn’t—he still had them in his mind. A memory, perhaps. But, no matter if they were  _ good _ or not. They were Taeyong’s. They were his alone.


End file.
